


Shakespeare's Globe

by blipblopblork



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Wibbly-wobbly timey wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:24:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blipblopblork/pseuds/blipblopblork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where the Doctor goes, legends follow. Today, he and Rose go to the theater.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shakespeare's Globe

In the fifty-third century, he takes her to see a play. It's an adaptation of Shakespeare, of sorts, with lots of extra bells and whistles and holograms that definitely weren't in the original when he went with Charley, but Shakespeare's Globe (the planet, not the theatre - that burned down again in the 3200s) is a popular vacation destination that someone, sometime, told them ought not to be missed.

They sit in the floating balcony and hold hands and giggle throughout the entire show, trying to identify the little snippets of Shakespeare - mostly Romeo and Juliet, it seems - that haven't been too badly mutilated over the past three thousand-odd years. Somewhere along the way, someone decided that 'star-crossed lovers' ought to be taken literally, so Romeo and Rose (yes, Rose. Apparently someone didn't quite grasp that the 'a rose by any other name' bit was supposed to be a metaphor) are from different planets, and slightly different (though both humanoid, albeit for a goldish tinge to Romeo's skin) species.

Rose's eyes are glued to the stage from curtain rise to curtain fall. Her eyes are wide, taking it all in - from the ridiculous costumes (both on the players and various members of the audience) to the over-the-top special effects (during the second act, an actual force field comes down to separate the 'star-crossed lovers', in what seems to now be a crossover with A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Doctor whispers to her of Pyramus and Thisbe and how it was oh-so-much funnier when the wall was played by an actual person - he'll have to take her to see it sometime. "But this bit isn't meant to be funny!", she whispers back, and she's right, but the Doctor doesn't care.)

The Doctor, on the other hand, is mostly watching Rose - enjoying her sense of wonder more than the show itself. He delights in her bright smile, that toothy grin that somehow always manages to light up a room, and not for the first time, he wonders what it would be like to kiss her. He doesn't, though, because he's a 900-year-old alien and she's a young and pretty shopgirl from Earth and they've fallen into a routine that doesn't include kissing, and even though he's told her that he 'dances', it's still somehow easier for both of them to pretend that he doesn't. Had he been paying any attention to the play in front of him, he might have noticed that he and Romeo, the golden alien, actually had quite a bit in common.

But he isn't paying attention, and so he's quite startled, when the lights come up, to see that Rose isn't laughing like he thought, but crying.

"Rose, what's wrong?"

"That was just awful! They were so in love and they were separated by a whole universe and they could never see each other again and he burned up a sun just to say goodbye and then they both threw themselves into the Void!" she summarized the plot between sniffles.

He burned up a sun? Ah, that would explain that great swirling orb floating in the theatre near the end of Act II.

"Rose, it's only a story. Travel between parallel universes is impossible, it could never happen!"

"I know. But I just kept thinking, what if it could, yeah? What if..." she trails off, and he wonders whether they're thinking the same thing, about the day when he will inevitably lose her, maybe not by parallel universe, but somehow, someday.

"Oi, no throwing yourself into the Void for me, promise?"

She looks up at him and smiles, tears nearly dry now.

"I promise."


End file.
